Imperial Russian Navy

The navy of the Russian Empire from Peter the Great’s founding in 1696 until the 1917 revolutions. Organized into Baltic, Black Sea, and later Pacific fleets, it grew into one of the larger European navies by the late 19th century. Its Baltic squadron sailed 18,000 nautical miles to the Far East only to be destroyed by the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Tsushima, 27 to 28 May 1905. Mutinies in the fleet, including the battleship Potemkin in 1905 and at Kronstadt, fed the revolutionary collapse of 1917.